


Eyes Full of Rain

by glorious_spoon



Series: A Story Never Told [3]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 10:59:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19171900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: He’s going to cry, he thinks, almost clinically. He’s going to cry, and Magnus is going to comfort him, and then Alec is still going to have to find a way to choke the words out and watch betrayal and disgust overtake the gentle sympathy on his face.





	Eyes Full of Rain

**Author's Note:**

> This probably won't make much sense without reading the earlier fics in this series. In short: Magnus, Alec, Jace, and Clary are captured by a rogue witch, and Jace and Alec wind up in a fuck-or-die situation. They comply, but they're both pretty traumatized about it. This is the aftermath.
> 
> (And I shouldn't have to say this, but given the response on the first two I probably do: if you have a problem with the subject matter, this is your cue to back-button out now.)

A week before they took their parabatai runes, Jace and Alec snuck out of the Institute in the middle of the night. It wasn’t something they did often anymore--wasn’t something _Alec_ did often anymore, mostly. Even at seventeen he’d been busy with the additional duties loaded on the presumptive Head of the New York Institute, entirely uninterested in crowded clubs with obscured exits and bad lines of sight and lots of handsy drunks and even less interested in watching Jace effortlessly charm his way into the pants of college coeds who were, in retrospect, way too old for him anyway.

That hadn’t really been Alec’s problem with it at the time, but they’d been a pair of fucked-up lonely kids, each in their own way. Neither of them had known better.

They snuck out, anyway, and instead of the kind of dark, noisy club that Jace favored on his nighttime prowls that he probably thought Alec didn’t know about, they ended up down in Red Hook, wandering through the shipping district that seemed cold and deserted at night. Ended up sitting on a loading dock, passing a pilfered bottle of whiskey back and forth in comfortable silence, Jace laughing quietly every time Alec took a sip and made a face.

“You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to,” he said finally, plucking the bottle out of Alec’s hands and taking a long gulp. His head tilted up toward the moonlit sky and his throat worked as he swallowed, and Alec looked at him and thought, _beautiful_ , and knew that he shouldn’t.

They were going to be parabatai. Shield-brothers. And it didn’t matter anyway, because Jace was straight, because Jace was never going to look at Alec the way he wanted him to, because their world was not one where people like Alec were allowed to exist even if neither of those things were true.

“I never said I didn’t want to,” he retorted, retrieving the bottle. He still couldn’t stop himself from making a face when he sipped from it, and Jace laughed out loud, and something in Alec uncoiled, relaxing.

 _Parabatai_ , he thought, and maybe it wasn’t everything he wanted, but it was enough. To have Jace, to defend him and fight by his side, bound together until the day they died--that would be enough. More than enough.

_Whither thou diest there shall I die, and there shall I be buried, and if aught but death should part thee and me—_

*

It’s that night that he’s thinking of when he stumbles out of the portal after Magnus, ten years and a lifetime later. That night on the docks, the infatuation he tortured himself over for years, and how fucking _innocent_ it all was.

His legs don’t seem to be working right. He feels like a clockwork marionette that’s been wound too tight, stuttering along in Magnus’s graceful wake. The portal spins away into nothingness behind them and he comes to a halt in the middle of his own living room, feeling too large, strange and unfitting in this space where he’s lived for years. Magnus turns to look at him.

He’s so beautiful. He looks like everything Alec has ever wanted, everything he once thought he’d never get to have, and in that moment Alec wants nothing more than to step into his space, to let Magnus draw him into his arms, to bury his face in Magnus’s shoulder and breathe in the scent of his skin and pretend that the past four hours never happened.

He doesn’t. He doesn’t move.

“Alexander?” Magnus says softly. His face is gentle and worried, limned in gold by the warm glow of the lamps. He knows something happened; of course he does. Magnus is anything but stupid.

Alec is pretty fucking sure that Magnus wouldn’t still be looking at him like that if he knew _what_ happened, though, and for a single cowardly instant the impulse to lie is strong enough to choke him. To strangle the words in his throat along with the scream that’s been living there since those moments in that hot, awful little room, the slide of sweat-slick skin and a heartbeat he knows as well as his own racing too fast and Jace’s panic and horror winding their bond tight enough to snap.

He doesn’t do that, either. He twists his wedding ring around on his finger, sees Magnus’s worried eyes follow the gesture, and straightens, folding his hands behind his back. Digs his nails into the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger. It doesn’t steady him the way it normally would.

He fixes his gaze on the wall behind Magnus’s head, and says, “I need to tell you something.”

Magnus is slightly out of focus from this perspective, but it would be impossible to miss the way he shakes his head. It’s more of a full body shudder. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.”

“I do. I—” His breath stutters in his throat. He’s going to cry, he thinks, almost clinically. He’s going to cry, and Magnus is going to comfort him, and then Alec is still going to have to find a way to choke the words out and watch betrayal and disgust overtake the gentle sympathy on his face.

He doesn’t know what happens after that. It’s all a howling blank. But he owes Magnus the truth, at least.

“Alexander,” Magnus says again. His hands lift, hesitate, drop. He steps forward, then stops well outside of Alec’s bubble. Almost, but not quite, too far away to touch. “Please look at me.”

A direct request. He blinks, his eyelashes clumping wetly together, and forces himself to meet Magnus’s eyes. “Magnus, I—”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Magnus says, and when he lifts a hand to cup Alec’s cheek the gesture is slow, cautious, like he’s giving Alec time to flinch away. He’s never been so careful with him. Never. Not even back at the very beginning, when Alec was confused and skittish and constantly ready to bolt. “But you can. If you want to. Only if you want to.”

Alec closes his eyes as Magnus’s palm comes to rest against his skin and says, with sinking realization, “You already know.”

“I know how magic like that works,” Magnus says. His voice is quiet, even, his hand warm against Alec’s cheek. “I know the kind of residue it leaves behind.”

Residue, Alec thinks. Other than the sweat dried on his skin and the slickness down the insides of his thighs and the low deep ache whenever he moves because Jace hadn’t really known what he was doing and Alec hadn’t been able to relax properly and neither of them wanted to make it last any longer than it had to anyway. Residue other than that. Some lingering magical filth that Magnus can sense. “Then you know. What we did.”

“What was done to you,” Magnus corrects.

Alec shakes his head. “It was just me and Jace in that room.”

“I know,” Magnus says, very softly. “That doesn’t change the fact that neither of you was willing.”

“I let him fuck me,” Alec says, blunt and harsh, then shakes his head. Because that isn’t the truth either. This isn’t Jace’s fault. It hadn’t been Jace’s call to make. This is all on Alec, the same way it’s always been. “I told him to do it.”

Magnus’s fingers twitch on his skin, but his voice is still steady. “That still doesn’t mean that you wanted it. Either of you.”

“I should have been able to figure out another way. I should have--we should have—”

“I should have been able to break us free before it came to that.” For the first time, Magnus’s voice wavers slightly. “I’m so sorry.”

Alec shakes his head, jerkily. “Don’t--this isn’t your fault.”

“It isn’t yours, either.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.” Magnus’s other hand comes up so that Alec’s face is cupped between his palms, thumbs smoothing over his cheekbones. Alec breathes in shakily and doesn’t open his eyes. “I do know that, because I know you, and I know that you wouldn’t have made that call unless it was the only choice you had.”

Alec takes another shuddering breath and manages, finally, to look at him. Magnus’s glamour has dropped, his eyes glowing golden. Flickers of magic lick over his skin, then vanish. “You’re angry.”

“Furious,” Magnus agrees, his voice still soft and even. “But not at you.”

“You should be mad at me. I—we both—” Alec shakes his head, the words sticking on his tongue, heavy and bitter. _We both got off, it wasn’t like you’re thinking, it didn’t hurt._ Not much, anyway. Not enough to stop him from getting hard, not enough to stop him from getting off even with Jace sobbing and shaking against his shoulder, and Alec knows a lot of bad things about himself but that might just be the worst of them. A shudder rolls up his body, and he’s suddenly too aware of the stiff, sticky feeling of sweat and come drying on his skin.

“Alexander?” Magnus asks, his hands dropping from Alec’s cheeks.

“I,” Alec swallows, and what comes out isn’t what he meant to say at all. “I need a shower.”

Magnus lets out a slow breath, then nods. “Okay.”

“Can you—” Alec stops. He has no right to ask for this, none at all, but his mouth is a traitor and the words stutter out anyway. “Can you come with me? Stay with me?”

Magnus doesn’t even hesitate. “Of course, darling. Of course I will.”

*

In the bathroom, the shower hisses on by itself, a cloud of steam beginning to fill the room as he strips efficiently, dropping his clothes on the floor and wishing they would catch fire where they land. There’s semen dried on the inside of his underwear and he kicks them away with a shudder, hears Magnus make a soft noise, doesn’t look at him. His body is unmarked but it feels like a crime scene all the same, ruined and untouchable. He wishes he could peel his skin off along with his clothes. Shred himself away to nothing.

When he finally manages to glance up, Magnus is still fully dressed, fine suit wilting against his body in a way that would be distracting in literally any other circumstances but these.

“You planning on showering in your clothes?” Alec asks, voice half a challenge, half something else entirely, something fragile and afraid. _Please don’t go. Please stay with me_.

As if he has any right to ask that now.

Magnus breathes out audibly, then says, “Of course not,” and starts peeling off his jacket and vest and shirt, methodical and meticulous as always. He pauses after he pulls his shoes and pants off, bare but for a pair of black cotton boxer-briefs that he definitely stole out of Alec’s drawer. Plucks at the waistband, then says, with an uncharacteristic kind of hesitancy, “Should I leave these on?”

Alec closes his eyes, gut-punched not so much by the question as the reason Magnus is asking. “No.”

Magnus, thankfully, doesn’t ask if he’s sure. He shoves the waistband down, steps out of the underwear, stands naked under the warm glow of the bathroom lights. He’s--familiar, his body is familiar, the breadth of his shoulders and his solid thighs. His cock is uncut, flaccid. The sight isn’t entirely unfamiliar. They’ve been together long enough now that not all nudity is an occasion for sex, but the cautious expression on his face is definitely new. Alec feels raw and sore and fucked up and half of him wants to walk into Magnus’s embrace and the other half wants to curl up alone under the hot shower until his skin boils away or the water goes cold, whichever happens first.

He can still feel Jace’s sickened misery through the bond. His own end of it is clamped down in a way he hasn’t done in years, but Jace never really got of knack for shutting their bond off. Never needed to, not the way Alec did. He’s trying, that much is obvious by how muted it all is, but there’s still bleedthrough, a discordant echo of his own anguish from the part of his soul that lives in another body.

After everything that happened, Alec still can’t be alone in his own fucking head for five seconds.

He sways on his feet, then braces his hand against the shower door and steps inside. The water feels a few degrees shy of boiling, flattening his hair immediately and running over his body like a waterfall. Magnus steps in after and pulls the door shut behind him without a word.

The last time they showered together was three days ago, and they ended up fucking against the tile wall while the water streamed down around them, Magnus’s hands and breathless voice urging him on, and afterwards they both collapsed, laughing and giddy, tangled up together and exchanging messy kisses and Alec remembers feeling--happy, just warm and loose and _happy_ in a way he once thought he’d never be.

Three days ago. It seems like a lifetime.

“Alexander?” Magnus says softly, and Alec becomes aware that he’s just standing under the spray, shoulders heaving, breathing raggedly like he’s going to--like he’s about to—

He fumbles for the bottle of soap with hands that feel stiff and clumsy, and the bottle slips out of his fingers. Magnus catches it with a flicker of instinctive magic before it can shatter on the floor of the shower, sets it aside, hesitates. He looks wretchedly uncertain. It’s a look that Alec has rarely seen on his face.

Not never. But rarely.

“Can I—” Magnus breathes out. He takes a deliberate step closer. Settles his palms on Alec’s shoulders. It’s the the closest he's been since they left the witch’s trap and something shivers through Alec at his touch. He feels Magnus’s hands start to lift and he clutches at them, suddenly desperate.

“Please,” he mumbles, and it’s pathetic, it’s _pathetic_ , raw and gasping and needy, and he can’t meet Magnus’s eyes or finish the sentence, but Magnus gets it anyway. His eyes lift to Alec’s face, and his hands settle on Alec’s shoulders, his fingers pressing in, pulling him close. Hauling him into the most graceless hug that Magnus has ever given him. His fingers press hard into Alec’s back, and his familiar body is bare against him, and Alec finds himself curling around him, pushing his face into the curve of Magnus’s throat and breathing hot and fast against his skin, his eyes burning, his throat tight.

“I’ve got you,” Magnus murmurs against his ear. His entire body is strung with tension but his hands are gentle. Soothing over Alec’s back and stroking into his hair as water falls around them, the sound of it almost enough to drown it out when Alec’s harsh breathing finds its way into sobs. “I’ve got you, Alexander.”

 


End file.
